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Lydia X. Z. Brown on Muck Rack

Lydia X. Z. Brown

Boston, Washington, D.C.
As seen in: The Washington Post, NBC News, Boston Herald, Rewire.News, Sojourners
Not a girl. I wear many hats and juggle many balls. You might be right about where you remember meeting me. Following my account is not a friendship.
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Lydia X. Z. Brown’s Biography

Lydia X. Z. Brown is a disability justice advocate, organizer, and writer whose work has largely focused on violence against multiply-marginalized disabled people, especially institutionalization, incarceration, and policing. They are currently a Justice Catalyst Fellow at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, providing legal representation and self-advocacy education to Maryland students with disabilities facing school pushout, disproportionate discipline, and criminalization. Lydia is also a past Visiting Lecturer at Tufts University, where they taught a course on critical disability theory, public policy, and intersectional social movements, and past chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council.

In collaboration with E. Ashkenazy and Morénike Giwa-Onaiwu, Lydia is the lead editor and visionary behind All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism, the first-ever anthology of writings and artwork by autistic people of color and otherwise negatively racialized autistic people, published by the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Morénike and Lydia also co-direct the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment, which provides direct support, mutual aid, and community reparations to individual autistic people of color. Lydia has received numerous awards for their work, and written for several community and academic publications, but they remain most passionate about their creative writing adventures.

Lydia’s work has been featured in a variety of publications, including:

  • Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies
  • Religion, Disability, and Interpersonal Violence
  • Barriers & Belonging: Personal Narratives of Disability
  • The Asian American Literary Review
  • Feminist Perspectives on Orange is the New Black
  • Criptiques
  • Torture in Healthcare Settings
  • QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology
  • Feminist Film Review
  • Tikkun
  • Sojourners Online
  • Student Health 101
  • Disability Intersections
  • Black Girl Dangerous
  • hardboiled magazine
  • The Establishment
  • Letters to the Revolution
  • POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE
  • The Washington Post

Lydia blogs occasionally at Autistic Hoya.